[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-85163-en":3,"doc-seo-85163-105":29,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":91},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":20,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":20,"is_downloadable":20,"audit_status":20,"page_count":21,"language":22,"language_code":23,"site_id":24,"html_lang":23,"table_of_contents":25,"faqs":26,"seo_title":13,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":27,"read_time":28},85163,962075114765,"Quinn","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_a8503ba1806abce46bf441b54a3ca4cd",8,"Research & Report","Religion and Artificial Intelligence as Distributed Meaning Systems: A Naturalistic Conceptual Model","This paper develops a naturalistic account of religion and artificial intelligence as structurally similar distributed meaning systems. It argues both arise from a shared underlying cognitive architecture: socially extended processes that externalize interpretation, norm-guidance, and world-model construction into symbolic environments. Drawing on distributed cognition, cultural evolution, and philosophy of mind, it presents a model of how meaning is generated, stabilized, and transmitted via recursive agent–ecology interactions, including AI’s capacity for culturally entrenched authority.","Religion and Artificial Intelligence as Distributed Meaning Systems: A Naturalistic Conceptual Model  \nDhushy Thillaivasan  \nSchool of Business, Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Australia [Email: ](Email: DThillaivasan@mit.edu.au)[DThillaivasan@mit.edu.au](Email: DThillaivasan@mit.edu.au)  \n*Corresponding author  \nSamar Shailendra  \nSchool of IT & Engineering, Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Australia Email: [sshailendra@mit.edu.au](sshailendra@mit.edu.au)  \nSohag Sarkar  \nSchool of Business, Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Australia Email: [ssarkar@academic.mit.edu.au](ssarkar@academic.mit.edu.au)  \n[Date:](Date: 10 July 2026)[ 10 July 2026](Date: 10 July 2026)  \nPreprint submitted to arXiv  \nAbstract  \nThis paper develops a naturalistic account of religion and artificial intelligence as structurally similar distributed meaning systems. I argue that both emerge from the same underlying cognitive architecture: socially extended processes that offload interpretation, norm‑guidance, and world‑model construction into external symbolic environments. Drawing on work in distributed cognition, cultural evolution, and philosophy of mind, the paper proposes a conceptual model showing how meaning is generated, stabilised, and transmitted through recursive interactions between agents and their informational ecologies.  \nReligion is analysed not as a set of beliefs but as a cognitive‑ecological system that scaffolds coordination, normativity, and shared interpretation. Contemporary AI systems are shown to instantiate analogous functions, operating as high‑bandwidth, algorithmically mediated environments that shape reasoning, attention, and social meaning‑making.  \nThe model explains how both systems create epistemic compression, reduce cognitive load, and generate shared frameworks that guide behaviour. It also clarifies the conditions under which AI systems can become culturally entrenched meaning authorities.  \nThe contribution is conceptual: a unified framework for understanding religion and AI as parallel forms of distributed cognitive machinery. This reframing opens new pathways for analysing artificial agents not as isolated tools but as components in evolving socio‑cognitive ecologies.  \nKeywords: Distributed cognition, Cognitive ecology, Distributed meaning systems, Meaning-making processes, Artificial intelligence, Religion as cognitive scaffolding  \n1. Introduction  \nHuman societies have long relied on systems that scaffold interpretation, coordinate behaviour, and stabilise shared understandings ofthe world. Religion is one of the most enduring of these meaning-making architectures. Artificial intelligence (AI), though emerging from a radically different substrate, is increasingly implicated in similar cognitive-ecological processes: shaping attention, guiding decisions, structuring informational environments, and influencing how individuals and groups construct shared significance. As AI systems become embedded in everyday cognition, they participate in meaning-making dynamics traditionally associated with cultural and institutional formations. Yet despite growing interest in the philosophical and cognitive implications of AI, there remains no naturalistic, conceptually unified account that examines religion and AI together as structurally comparable distributed meaning systems.  \nExisting scholarship tends to approach the relationship between religion and AI from three directions. The first is theological or normative, asking whether AI challenges or extends religious doctrines. The second is anthropological, examining how people imagine, ritualise, or mythologise AI (Singler, 2020). The third is speculative, projecting future scenarios in which AI becomes an object of worship or a quasi-divine authority. While each of these perspectives offers valuable insights, none provides a naturalistic, cognitive-ecological framework capable of explaining why religion and AI exhibit parallel patt","cbCailmJgxFhntA2","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCailmJgxFhntA2","pdf",316797,1,19,"English","en",105,"# Introduction\n## Research gap and motivation\n## Naturalistic unified framework\n# Conceptual model overview\n## Five analytical dimensions\n## Dynamics of algorithmic authority","[{\"question\":\"What is the core claim about religion and AI in this paper?\",\"answer\":\"Religion and AI are treated as structurally similar distributed meaning systems that coordinate behaviour and stabilize shared understanding through externalized cognitive scaffolding.\"},{\"question\":\"Which cognitive mechanism is proposed to underlie both religion and AI?\",\"answer\":\"Both are said to emerge from socially extended cognitive processes that offload interpretation, norm-guidance, and world-model construction into external symbolic environments.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the framework explain AI’s potential to become a culturally entrenched authority?\",\"answer\":\"By describing recursive interactions between agents and informational ecologies, the model identifies conditions under which AI can generate stable, shared frameworks that guide reasoning and social 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